


Shield

by ClaraCivry (Kat_Of_Dresden)



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Explosion, Gen, Grautituous whump, Human shield, Hurt Malcolm Bright, Major Character Injury, Sad, Sad Dani powell, Whump, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 22:50:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20897423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat_Of_Dresden/pseuds/ClaraCivry
Summary: There's been an explosion.Malcolm has protected Dani.But there's been a cost.Based on the whumptober prompt: "Human shield"





	Shield

She was too late.

Dani knew that she was too close to the explosion, that she wasn't able to get enough distance. The blast was too close for her it was going to... It was going to destroy her. She looked around, in a half a second whispered a quick goodbye to the world and made herself a ball, almost instinctively.

Dani's life may not have been very long, but it was a life well lived and....

The blast was deafening and she didn't know if she was screaming... Her whole body felt the shock and for some seconds the world was only a blur of sound and fire and a heavy weight falling down on her. A warmth that made no sense at all. But nothing made any sense at all, not when the entire world was falling apart.

But the pain... The pain never came and she realised, some seconds later, that she was alive and whole, that she was even conscious. She hurt, yes, and yes was going to be sore and she was very disoriented, but... It was going to be fine. How could that be?

Her hands were still shaking and her ears were still ringing (it was so loud, the ringing, Dani windered if she would ever hear again) but she.... She decided to open her eyes. She needed to understand why there was no pain, what had happened. And if something worse was coming.

There was something warm on top of her - that was the weight she felt. Something that covered her almost completely, and buffered the effects of the explosion. No, not something, someone. She could hardly recognize him with his eyes closed. 

Dani stopped breathing for a moment, as Malcolm Bright's unconscious body slid down. It had been him: he was who had buffered the explosion, he was the reason why the explosion hadn’t killed her. She’d had a shield. He’d been her shield.

Malcolm had seen her and without a second thought he had jumped on top of her, covering as much as he could with his long limbs. It hurt, horribly for a bit. Then the world went black and Malcolm just hoped that she would be all right, without sparing a single thought to himself. This was for the best.

Dani had forgotten how to breathe and the world had disappeared, and so had the people screaming. There was only him. 

He was covered in debris, his leg and arm bent in weird ways and there was blood on his chest, on his leg, down his mouth. 

"Bright?" 

He looked like a broken doll and he.... 

"Wake up. Bright, don't... Please...." 

She cradled his unconscious form looking for any signs of life. His pulse was slow. His breathing shallow. He was dying, in her arms, and it hurt more than anything else. 

"HELP! I NEED HELP!!" 

She couldn't hear herself with the ringing in her ears, but... 

He looked so bad, he must have hurt so much. Unconscious, bloodied, dirty, broken down hero who was in the very brink of death... Just to try and save her. 

She screamed for help again and held him. He probably couldn't hear her, but she rocked and kept repeating "you'll be fine, you'll be fine" 

*

She's in front of the hospital room, looking at her savior from behind a glass. No one was supposed to be in ICU but they made an exception for her and Gil. 

"What did the doctors say? And don't sugar coat it." she asked him, not taking her eyes from the figure on the bed, unconscious and looking pale as death. 

"It could go either way. His lung is the main issue, a rib broke and punctured it. He’s got six broken bones and some internal bleeding... But the worst thing is the head injury. Apparently, he could develop... You don’t need the details. It could just get worse and he would... But he won’t. He’s tougher than he looks, he can pull through.”

There’s a distant look in Dani’s eyes as she looks to the figure on the bed. All broken down, shattered even... Because he shielded her.

“He’s saved my life so many times since he started working with us. Yours, too. He keep being there for us, for random people he’s never met. All he ever does is save people’s lives and be there for us... And we’re too late. He keeps getting hurt and we keep being too late for him.”

“Dani...”

“He could die, Gil. Look at him. Because I wasn’t fast enought, because I...”

Dani didn’t like to cry. She didn’t see the point of it and it made her feel small. But now... It was hard not to cry.

She remembered the blast. The world disappearing around her. An alien warmth she didn’t understand. Him. Protecting her from all this damage.

Bright with his weird humour, with his big eyes, with his stupid heart and his ability to make her smile for the strangest of reasons... He was unique and he was theirs: their colleague, their friend, their brother. He had an incredibly hard life and now that he was finally finding his place.... She didn’t know when exactly he’d become so important for her, for the team. But he was.

There was only a sound of machines on the other side.

Dani waited, and the world seemed to have halted. There was no explosion, there was no case. There was just her and him, in that hospital room.

“Wake up.” She said, feeling like a lost little child. “Please, wake up.”

Trying to distract herself, she started scribbling something. The next day Ainsley got an intriguing e-mail with a heart-wrenching article attached to it, from a name that sounded familiar but wasn't any of her regular sources. The title just read:

“Human shield: How a million broken pieces made a hero”

And so Dani waited, and told him about her day, about all the things that she could do since she hadn’t died in the explosion. She missed him. They all did.

“You’ll be fine. You just need some rest. You’ll be fine.”

_ _You have to be._ _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Please do leave a comment if you liked!


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